Mythical Sex Addiction vs Real Sex Addiction

There is, in my professional opinion, both mythical and real sex addiction. I sent this description to a reporter responding to the upcoming book by David Ley: The Myth of Sex Addiction. I’d been planning a blog post along these lines for a while now. Read on to understand the difference between mythical and real sex addiction and how both can negatively impact your sex life.

First of all, I communicated with a woman once who has an extreme example of sex addiction. Her story shows the obvious existence of it. For one thing, and there were many, she had to line up five or more men throughout the week to have her urges satisfied. She didn’t even like the sex or cared about orgasm that much, just as long as she got her itch scratched. It was a strong compulsion much more so than bountiful pleasure/happiness seeking. Most of all, it interfered with her career and put it in jeopardy several times. That’s another hallmark of sex addiction. When you can’t perform daily functions like going to work, paying bills, etc. because you have to serve the addiction. Also, if you don’t care about STD safety or seek out dangerous sex for the self-destructive rush of the risk of STD infection. There are those too who have so much compulsive sex that they physically damage their sex organs or other sexually-involved anatomy because they cannot stop even when the organ needs to heal.

I don’t treat sex addiction and my training is not psychology-based. I was trained by my mentor, Betty Dodson, who is the first sex coach. She claims to not believe in sex addiction, but when I pose the above cases to her, she clearly identifies them as problems. What she’s referring to is how certain anti-sex religious and non-religious special interest groups or individuals have a new tactic where any form or amount of sexual expression and enjoyment that is outside of their belief system as acceptable is attacked as a form of addiction.

Needless to say, the sexual sophistication of these groups is not impressive and they make biased statements based on what is expected by their religion and nothing else. They have a right to do this and to their beliefs (and there is a huge spectrum of beliefs in any given major religion) but I also support people’s rights to do otherwise when outside of the constraints of these anti-sex groups. This mythical form of “sex addiction” is what must be shown for what it is: a tool of manipulation aimed at everyone– not just members of their faith. Other non-religious examples include people who accuse others of sex addiction as a barb because they’re envious or making judgements on how much they value a great sex life as compared to how others value it.

Another form of mythical sex addiction has also become the new in-vogue way of blaming ages old sexual indulgence, whether ethically-indulged or otherwise, on “sex addiction” which you can go to a 12-step type program for and blame on for what you did. As if it’s a condition that you had no control over when in many cases, many people did. Tiger Woods went to treatment for sex addiction, but in all his years playing golf, he never missed a tournament. I.E., he didn’t miss work or fail to pay the bills. Maybe he had a lack of concern about STD’s, but that’s still a murky situation. Tiger is a very rich and powerful man who was still acting like a single guy when he should have been acting like a monogamous husband in all probability.

Mythical sex addiction can hurt women because they already have enough pressure by the surrounding culture to not be sexually expressive (except when it primarily serves men). To have the specter that, “more sex than quantity X vs Y” makes you a sex addict makes matters worse. I’ve worked with women clients in couples and as individuals on the skills and principles I coach on to create sophisticated, highly pleasurable, and manageable sex lives. One positive statement I receive from women on my coaching info is: “I had no idea my body was capable of these feelings,” which they now have the power to enjoy solo or with a partner, thus adding to their quality of life. They let go of negative messages very easily when they have a big payoff from sex and see how it clicks into place in their lives. I see high-quality sex bringing couples closer together because you now have a very intimate and tremendous source of positivity to share between the two of you. Mythical sex addiction accusations rob women and the people they choose to have sex with of this positivity.

Once you break things down into how I’ve described it, real sex addiction vs mythical sex addiction is clear.